Wednesday, July 11, 2018

NATO has a good story to tell????

via Breaking Defense.

The individual members of the alliance are spending tens of billions more on their defense than was the case just two years ago, and the meeting will reaffirm the creation of two new commands: an Atlantic Command based in Norfolk to support the reborn U.S. Second Fleet, and a Support Command based in Ulm, Germany, which will coordinate forward deployment of forces inside Europe.

The commands, alliance members say, prove Europe is embracing reform to outpace Russian military modernization, to hold the line in the North Atlantic against increasing Russian submarine activity, and prepare for the arrival of Chinese shipping in the Arctic as ice floes melt.

But from the U.S. perspective, the focus will be on spending: specifically, getting allies to spend two percent of their GDP on defense, with 20 percent of that going directly into modernization programs.

“It’s about making sure our partners are living up to what they agreed to at the Wales summit in 2014,” one administration official told me. “No one is expecting allies to go immediately to go to two percent, but what we really want to see now is what is the credible plan to get there? You’ve gotta have a plan.”

As it stands now, not every country has a credible plan to reach the two percent goal by 2024, something that has frustrated American policymakers.

The issue of the 20 percent often gets lost in the larger debate over spending, but its one that U.S. officials, during conversations in the run up to the summit, repeatedly emphasized.

The highlighted portion in red is what irks me the most about NATO. The US creates a new fleet to meet the defense needs of Europe, they create a "support" command and then they claim that because WE have dedicated more forces to protect them that they're committed to the alliance!!

Simply amazing.

Some say (and I can't disagree) that its past time the Europeans start spending money on their own defense. Credible money. Additionally the EU countries have a higher population base but if you look at their combined forces we have committed many more forces to their actual defense....most of their troops are in garrison!

The most perplexing part of this is that we've heard these same complaints that Trump is spouting from Bush Jr thru the Obama administration and even from Mattis.

What has the Europeans frightened is that Trump is pounding the table.

That means that the status quo of the US complaining while the Europeans make empty promises is over.

Between Trump's rumblings with regard to NATO and with the SecState making an unannounced visit to Afghanistan I think we're gonna see a couple more campaign promises delivered on.

I really believe that Trump is determined to bring the troops home from the frontier. The military will howl but this tough medicine is just what the doctor ordered. For some unknown reason the military leadership has fallen in love with forward deployment.

Penny packets of US troops just begs a modern day Guadalcanal or Wake Island.

Trump might be saving the US and his generals from globalists and a fraudulent strategy.